Nick Hornby on An Education

In his latest film, the novelist and screenwriter introduces the alluring and magical Carey Mulligan

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The first time I watched An Education, I cried and cried afterward," says Carey Mulligan, the film's 24-year-old star. "I thought, I'm not doing anything; I'm really boring; why didn't I act more?" This is not what the writer of the film—in this case, me—necessarily wants to hear. Sobbing gratitude, yes; actual misery, no. But then, actors are a notoriously self-critical bunch, and before they get to a point where they can take pleasure in their own performance, there are a lot of tears to wade through, metaphorically, and occasionally even literally.

We are sitting in a café in north London in summer 2009, a couple of months before An Education, adapted from a short piece of memoir by the English journalist Lynn Barber, is released. We don't know for sure how people will feel about the film or its star, but even Mulligan is beginning to recognize that she did an okay job. Just about every film blogger thinks her performance as Jenny is going to earn her a nomination of some kind; when the film was shown at Sundance earlier this year, her career switched straight into the fast lane. (I was with her at Sundance, and it was thrilling, if slightly scary, to watch.) She was the "Sundance It Girl," according to Variety, and "the new Audrey Hepburn" in the New York Post. Snarky Hollywood website Defamer described her performance as "a breakthrough that makes Ellen Page's Juno turn look like a Lifetime reject."

It turned out that she wasn't so boring, and that her disciplined, nuanced, moving, and utterly convincing portrayal of a 16-year-old girl in a dangerous and potentially ruinous affair with an older man in 1961 contained quite a lot of acting. "She's an acting machine!" says her friend Keira Knightley, who has just finished working with Mulligan on an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go. "I set her a task in one of the scenes to drop one tear out of her right eye on a certain line, and she did it every single time. I think we must have done 20 takes."

Only now is it possible to see just how lucky we were to find her for An Education. This is what we needed: a girl—probably an actress most people hadn't heard of, given that our central character was a teenager—who could carry the film, someone who'd be asked to appear in just about every single minute of every scene without boring an audience to tears. Oh, and she would need to be convincing as a schoolgirl while at the same time not raising any awkward questions about vulnerability or appropriateness when it came to her relationship with the older man, played by Peter Sarsgaard. And she would also have to switch from girlhood to young womanhood at the drop of a shoulder strap. ("I used to hate looking young in terms of getting ID requests in bars, but in work it has been mostly a good thing," Mulligan says.) One thing was for sure: Nobody would ever see An Education and come out saying, "Well, she wasn't much good, but I enjoyed the film." This part was the film. Was all this too much to ask for? Almost certainly, but in Carey Mulligan we got it anyway.

The moment I read Barber's memoir, I knew it would make a movie. It was funny and sad, and even in those 10 or so pages there was a memorable cast of characters: a father who seemed to embody a certain kind of Englishness, a lover who managed to combine a sleazy criminality with a bizarre romantic ineptness, a fierce but depressingly unreflective headmistress. And then there was Lynn (who became Jenny as I developed the script and wanted to loosen its connection with the source material), a sparkly, cultured, sheltered teenager who has all the answers to everything, apart from the questions that matter. I had met Barber a few times, and could make an educated guess at the kind of teenager she might have been; and though I grew up in the 1970s, I knew plenty of smart suburban teenage girls who wanted to leave their parents and their upbringing behind. Even so, a scriptwriter never really knows whether a character is credible until he sees an actor attempting to give her voice, but when I saw the DVD of Carey's audition, it was clear that the kind of animation she would bring to the role went above and beyond anything I had any right to expect. The lines merely gave her an excuse, a way in, and the ferocious intelligence that illuminates the screen is almost all hers, I'm sorry to say.

Mulligan was indeed comparatively unknown—an appearance in the BBC's brilliant Bleak House adaptation a few years back, a part as a little Bennet sister alongside Keira Knightley in Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice. Her performance as Nina in The Seagull, at the Royal Court in London and later on Broadway, moved things along; Nina earned her spectacular reviews, and, perhaps just as significantly, a powerful CAA agent, Chris Andrews. "After signing her, we knew we were onto something," Andrews says. "She would go to auditions, and even the roles that she didn't get would prompt an immediate call from the director, who would routinely begin by saying something along the lines of: `This girl Carey Mulligan—do you have any idea what you have on your hands here?' "

Did Sundance change her life? "Not...not my life," she says carefully. "I think my work changed. Things have become easier for me, and I've had a couple of offers without having to audition for things, which is really weird...." This is a levelheaded answer, even if it doesn't account for the way that work has overtaken life. In 2009, she has made Never Let Me Go, met with Mike Nichols and Oliver Stone, been given a part in Stone's Wall Street 2, and done glitzy magazine shoots. "Anyway," Mulligan continues, determinedly and impressively downbeat, "It's not as if anyone's seen An Education yet. Our mates have seen it, and our families, and a couple of thousand people at festivals.... You can get away with loads on buzz alone."

That buzz, though, is perhaps more important than Mulligan is prepared to acknowledge; indeed, to some extent, the critical and commercial response to An Education is immaterial now, at least when it comes to her career. Having spent some time with her this year, at film festivals and screenings, I feel I have a much better sense of how the industry works when it comes to star making. Perhaps you, like me, felt that it went something like this: A young actress like Carey makes a film, the public and the critics like her in it, and filmmakers and executives take note. The reality is that the movie business takes bets on stardom—and to some extent, when the movie business bets, then all bets are off.

Here's a story: Two weeks before Sundance, a producer friend in London who was attempting to put together Never Let Me Go asked me whether he should consider Mulligan for the lead role of Kathy. I told him that she was brilliant and that he wouldn't find anyone better. "Unfortunately, she won't help me get the film made," he said glumly—meaning, her name was not going to persuade financiers to stump up the money. A week after Sundance, this had changed. A studio was prepared to fund the film with Mulligan attached—but by then, she was in high demand. He flew out to see her in New York to persuade her to consider the part. He could have seen her for the price of a cup of coffee three weeks earlier, and Carey might even have picked up the bill. What with Never Let Me Go and Wall Street 2, we will be seeing a lot of her next year. Of course, you might all decide that you hate her, but the message will take a while to get through to those who have
decided to invest in Mulligan's stock.

Knightley, for one, doesn't think anyone is taking any risks in their investment. "I think Carey is an amazing talent, and I don't think her success has come as a surprise to anyone who knows her or has watched her work," she says. "I think the main difference between the Carey of Pride & Prejudice and the Carey of now is her focus. She's not the wide-eyed ingenue anymore—she's the professional. She's incredibly committed to what she does, and she's definitely a woman on a mission. On a more personal level, she also does a wonderful rendition of `I Would Do Anything for Love' by Meatloaf if you pour enough wine down her...."

It's a relief to know that she's capable of committing such youthful solecisms. She might look younger than her years, but she seems older—in fact, she gives the impression of belonging to another time. An Education is set in 1961, but I suspect it's not just the period that has resulted in the comparisons to Hepburn and Leslie Caron: She has a wonderful 1960s BBC voice and a throwback gamine quality that sets her apart from many of her peers. Mulligan comes from a sensible English middle-class family—her father works in the hotel business—and though she intended to study drama, her parents wanted her to get a degree somewhere.

Her successful Pride & Prejudice audition, however, pushed her straight off into the world of work. "I've only really learned by watching other people," she says. "That's been my drama school." Her role model is Kate Winslet, another technically accomplished English actress with enormous range. "She's always really ballsy—she totally commits to each choice she makes, never seems afraid." Has she met her? "No. She and Sam Mendes came to see The Seagull on Broadway, on possibly my worst night of the entire run—to the point where I literally hid afterward. And then I went underneath the stage so I didn't have to meet them. Out the back door and into a taxi, and then I burst into tears." You don't have to spend very long in her company to understand that work matters.

"I don't think I want more than I've already got. I just want to work. I'm happiest when I'm working." She smiles ruefully. "Which I know is something I'm supposed to address." Until she has addressed the imbalance, it's going to be hard to claim that her life hasn't changed beyond all recognition.